Pattern-Induced Visual Discomfort and Anxiety in Migraineurs: Their Relationship and the Effect of Colour

In migraineurs, coloured lenses were found to reduce the visual stress caused by an aversive pattern known to trigger migraines by 70%, but do such patterns also produce a low-level anxiety/fear response? Is this response lessened by colour? We sought to investigate this in a study comprising a broad screening component followed by a dot-probe experiment to elicit attentional biases (AB) to aversive patterns. Undergraduate psychology students completed headache and visual discomfort (VD) questionnaires (N = 358), thereby forming a subject pool from which 13 migraineurs with high visual discomfort and 13 no-headache controls with low visual discomfort, matched on age and sex, completed a dot-probe experiment. Paired stimuli were presented for 500 ms: aversive achromatic 3 cpd square wave gratings vs control, scrambled patterns. These conditions were repeated using the colour that was most comfortable for each participant. VD was greater in the more severe headache groups. On all measures, the migraineurs were more anxious than the controls, and a positive relationship was found between VD and trait anxiety. The 3 cpd gratings elicited an aversive AB in the migraine group which was somewhat reduced by the use of colour, and this was not seen in the controls. The results suggest a new role for colour in reducing visual stress via anxiety/fear reduction.

Informational Determinants of Large-area Hurricane Evacuations

This study reports on two experiments to investigate the informational determinants of hurricane evacuation decisions (temporal and spatial). Whereas most observational and experimental studies in this domain address the public’s response to forecast information, this study addresses emergency management decisions. Using a subject sample of emergency managers and other public safety leaders, contrasted with a more typical university subject pool, this study presents an experimental design that overcomes the counterfactual problem present in all prior published experiments, by relying on an actual storm (Hurricane Rita) with a known outcome. Several methodological advancements are presented, including the use of an established numeracy instrument, integration of advanced hydrodynamic forecasts, and use of a loss aversion frame to improve generalizability. Results indicate that the availability of additional forecast information (e.g., wind speed, forecast tracks) significantly increases the probability and improves the timing of early voluntary evacuation. However, we observe that more numerate subjects are less likely to avoid relying upon forecast information that is characterized by probability (e.g., the uncertainty in the forecast track, sometimes referred to as the “cone of uncertainty”). Consequently, more numerate emergency managers are almost twice as likely as less numerate ones to provide additional evacuation time to their coastal communities, and they do so by longer than a typical workday (8.8 hours). Results also indicate that subjects knowingly over-evacuate large populations when making spatial mandatory evacuation orders. However, results indicate that numeracy mitigates this effect by more than half in terms of the population subject to mandatory evacuation.

COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF HEMODYNAMIC PARAMETERS DURING LAPAROSCOPY IN DEXMEDETOMIDINE VERSUS FENTANYL TREATED PATIENTS.

Background: Laparoscopic surgery is preferred for its advantages in shorter hospital stay, less amount of blood loss and aesthetic incisions. The problems are however evident when the complications of hemodynamic disturbances are enhanced due to pneumoperitoneum. Several newer formulations have ben tried to overcome this problem so that issues of hemodynamic stability can be addressed. Aim: The present study aims to comparatively evaluate the hemodynamic effects of dexmedetomidine and fentanyl in subjects undergoing elective laparoscopic surgeries. Methodology: The study involved a subject pool of 60 patients who were divided equally in two groups and administered the study drugs. Parameters of hemodynamic stability were recorded and analysed to ascertain comparative efficacy. Observations: The mean HR, SBP, DBP, MAP and sedation score were better in dexmedetomidine group as compared to fentanyl group. Conclusion: Dexmedetomidine is an effective adjuvant to anaesthetic medications in laparoscopic surgeries with a disadvantage of longer surgery duration as compared to fentanyl. Keywords: Dexmedetomidine, Comparative evaluation, fentanyl, Laparoscopic surgeries

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HS-CRP AND ACUTE ISCHEMIC STROKE EVENT IN A SAMPLE POPULATION IN RAJASTHAN

Use of serum markers has been a established practice in medicine. CRP levels have been known to provide a estimate of inflammation. The present study was formulated to ascertain if levels of CRP in acute ischaemic stroke cases can be a prognostic or diagnostic marker for the condition. The study was a prospective case control format and utilized a subject pool of 50 subjects as case and control each. The study observed a significantly elevated level of CRP in cases with an acute ischaemic stroke. The study concluded that use of CRP can be a an effective modality in clinical practice in managing such cases. Keywords: CRP, Acute Ischaemic Stroke, TOAST

They’re Comparing Me to Her: Social Comparison Perceptions Reduce Belonging and STEM Engagement Among Women With Token Status

Belonging and academic engagement are important predictors of women’s retention in STEM. To better understand the processes influencing these outcomes, we investigate how numerical underrepresentation (i.e., token status) triggers social comparison perceptions—concerns that others are comparing oneself to another person—that can undermine women’s STEM outcomes. Across four experiments, female college students recruited via subject pool (Study 1a) and MTurk (Studies 1b–3) read a hypothetical scenario in which another female (Studies 1a–3) or male (Study 2) student performed well or poorly in an engineering course. Findings showed that having token (vs. non-token) status in the course increased social comparison perceptions (i.e., perceptions about being compared to an ingroup peer), which subsequently reduced course belonging (Studies 1a and 1b). Study 2 found that (a) token status increased social comparison perceptions in response to the ingroup (vs. outgroup) peer and (b) social comparison perceptions decreased belonging through stereotype threat concerns, particularly when the peer performed poorly. Study 3 directly manipulated social comparison perceptions to further establish their causal role on negative outcomes and demonstrated that these perceived direct comparisons predicted additional consequences signaling STEM disengagement. Collectively, findings identify a novel process that can diminish belonging and academic engagement for women in STEM. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843211005447

Putting Space Syntax to the Test

While space syntax analysis has been widely applied to archaeological sites (including Pompeii), it is fundamentally limited by its isolation within the social sciences and its omission of decoration from the analysis of human cognition and movement within structures. At the same time, phenomenology in archaeology has typically arisen from the physical experiences of a limited number of professional archaeologists in a landscape, with little interest in digital embodiment in virtual spaces. The Virtual Pompeii Project has produced an updated version of space syntax which combines network measures common in the social sciences with visibility graphs to produce predictive models of movement within a set of three ancient Roman houses in Pompeii. These predictive models are tested through the navigation of virtual models of the houses by human subjects, demonstrating the significance of decoration in shaping movement, and, through quantitative and qualitative data, the value of digitally embodied phenomenology. This points ahead to the use of crowd-sourced, web-based global testing, diversifying the subject pool far beyond the narrow bounds of professional classicists or archaeologists.

Psychological Effects of Poverty on Time Preferences

We test whether an environment of poverty affects time preferences through purely psychological channels. We measured discount rates among farmers in Uganda who made decisions about when to enjoy entertainment instead of working. To circumvent the role of economic constraints, we experimentally induced thoughts about poverty-related problems, using priming techniques. We find that thinking about poverty increases the preference to consume entertainment early and to delay work. Using monitoring tools similar to eye tracking, a novel feature for this subject pool, we show that this effect is unlikely to be driven by less careful decision-making processes.

Psychology as a Historical Science

Psychology has traditionally seen itself as the science of universal human cognition, but it has only recently begun seriously grappling with cross-cultural variation. Here we argue that the roots of cross-cultural variation often lie in the past. Therefore, to understand not only how but also why psychology varies, we need to grapple with cross-temporal variation. The traces of past human cognition accessible through historical texts and artifacts can serve as a valuable, and almost completely unutilized, source of psychological data. These data from dead minds open up an untapped and highly diverse subject pool. We review examples of research that may be classified as historical psychology, introduce sources of historical data and methods for analyzing them, explain the critical role of theory, and discuss how psychologists can add historical depth and nuance to their work. Psychology needs to become a historical science if it wants to be a genuinely universal science of human cognition and behavior.

On the Psychology of the Psychology Subject Pool

Many psychology researches are performed through “psychology subject pools” which give participants considerable flexibility when they participate. This “participant degree-of-freedom” has led to concern that the characteristics of subject pool participants may change with time, with the most engaged students signing up at the start of the semester and the least engaged students leaving it all to the end. In this paper, we performed an exploratory analysis to look for evidence of this “good student effect.” Consistent with previous work, we find support for the good student effect with earlier participants scoring higher on the Big-Five subscales of Achievement-Striving and Cooperation, as well as Grit and Empathic-Concern. In addition, we found a non-linear effect of time-of-semester on Sensation-Seeking, with this measure peaking in the middle of the semester as well as the end. However, the vast majority of the measures we tested, including measures of personality, cognition, decision-making, and social interaction, did not correlate with time-of-semester or time-of-day at all. Thus, we conclude that, while some studies directly related to measures of Grit and Sensation-Seeking would do well to recruit throughout the semester, in most cases any bias introduced by the good student effect is likely to be small.